‘They are not heading this way at all at present, so Denser said when relating your heroics. Stupid old man that you are. If and when they turn, we will have four days, maybe five. How is your hip, anyway? ’
‘A little stiff.’ Sol smiled.
Diera did not respond in kind. She came and sat on the side of the bed. She gestured at him, his clothes, and she shook her head.
‘Where have you been?’
Sol swung his legs over the side of the bed to sit next to her and brushed dust and dirt from the sheet. The blood of the Garonin was still wet on his clothes and would stain.
‘Sorry about that.’
Diera shrugged. ‘Doesn’t really matter now, does it?’
‘I suppose not.’ Sol leaned forward. ‘I don’t know where they took me. The enemy, that is. I hope Denser and the college can help me with that. Somewhere beyond our dimension… any dimension come to that. But there was familiarity there that I can’t explain.’
‘Why didn’t they just kill you?’
‘They wanted to make me agree to passive genocide, if you can believe it. But I made them see that we would fight them to the last man.’
Diera smiled at last. ‘The mighty King Sol. Still fighting the good fight though this enemy is by all accounts too powerful to defeat even if we had a dozen colleges and a million soldiers.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Hirad. Old Hirad, that is.’
‘Survived, did he? That’s good.’ Sol felt a little warmth for the first time since he had returned. ‘And you believe him to be the soul of Hirad in another body now, do you?’
The nod was fractional. ‘The weight of evidence suggests that he might be telling the truth. His shadow completely freaks me out. Why does that happen?’
‘Because the soul remembers the body it once inhabited, I suppose. It just goes to show that whatever skin you’re in, you’re still the same.’
Diera chuckled. ‘And you can stop your lectures on the nature of man right there. And how did the enemy respond?’
‘Garonin, that’s what they call themselves. They didn’t believe me. Showing them resulted in the three of them dying.’
‘Back to the old methods of negotiation, is it?’
‘You have been my wife for too long. Is my face really that revealing?’ Sol shook his head. ‘They made me angry. Wanted to stop me getting back to you. I can’t have that, can I?’
Diera stroked his face. ‘You never could. Lucky for me you always make it, isn’t it?’
‘I tell you one thing though. They mean to drain us of every drop of mana we possess and they will not stop until they get it. They are too powerful here on Balaia. We can’t turn them away forever. And that means for you, for ordinary Xeteskians, it is time to leave.’
‘And go where? If they are determined to kill us all, then nowhere is safe.’
‘We’ll find an escape,’ said Sol. ‘Things the Garonin said to me, mistakes they made. This isn’t over, not by a long way. The dead will help us.’
Diera threw her arms around his neck and they clutched each other tight.
‘Why does it always have to be you?’ she said, her face buried in his shoulder.
‘I’m just lucky, I suppose.’
She broke away and punched his arm. ‘Bastard. What happens now?’
‘Well, we get a few hours more sleep. Then I go to the Mount and we work out how to turn the Garonin away once more and where to run in the time that gives us. As for you, my love, I mean what I say. Take the boys. Take anyone else who believes enough to go with you. Head west. Find Tessaya. He knows you. The Wesmen will guard you until I get to you again.’
Diera nodded and sighed. ‘All right. But you know Jonas is already talking about Beshara. He’s not stupid. If we have to run, why not to a place where dragons will guard us?’
Sol blinked. Beshara. Realm of the dragons and inextricably linked to Balaia by the mental connections between Kaan brood dragons and selected human mages. And Jonas was a Dragonene. The Dragonene of Sha- Kaan, leader of his brood.
‘How can I have been so stupid?’
Chapter 16
Sha-Kaan soared back into the clear blue heavens above Beshara and looked down at the devastation below. A line of seven vydospheres travelled the plains of Dormar, driving towards the steaming forests of Teras. His forests. Home of the Kaan.
The vydospheres spanned a huge swathe of the once-beautiful plains. Flush with Flamegrass, dense with life and the dwellings of the Vestare, human servants of the Kaan and all of Beshara’s multiple broods of dragon. The war-torn world had known peace for many cycles and now this threatened to destroy all that had been built.
Behind the vydospheres, Dormar was a wasteland, worse than the ancient blasted lands of the Keol. The Garonin had already visited destruction upon the homelands of the Naik, the Skoor and even the ocean-going Veret. Now, closing on the lands of the largest brood, they were meeting significant resistance. Sha-Kaan could still see the wilderness expanding, the fires burning, spreading and consuming on a wider and wider arc.
Away to the south, the smoking ruins of an eighth vydosphere littered the ground, sparking fire here and there as it slowly disappeared. From the funnels of the others belched smoke and ash while above them the ground was occasionally obscured by the clouds formed as mana was burned for collection.
Sha-Kaan roared his flight to him. Thirty dragons, climbing hard into the sky, beyond the range of the tracers of white fire and the looping, smoking explosive projectiles. The Garonin had flooded the plain with men and weapons. They crushed Flamegrass underfoot, powdered the homes of the Vestare in their path and rendered all that was living to pale dust.
Yet they were still vulnerable. Six flights of dragons were in the air above them, awaiting the order to strike. Others from allied broods were on the way. The sky was filling with the massive shapes of dragons and the deafening noise of their calls and barks.
Sha-Kaan twisted his long, slender neck to check the damage to his one-hundred-and-twenty-foot-long body. Russet gold scales, some warped with age, others blistered by the heat of enemy weapons. Those blackened by the lick of dragon fire were trophies earned in forgotten conflicts.
He snapped his wings to their fullest width and executed a long, graceful turn, bringing him round behind the centre of the Garonin advance.
‘Hold your shape. Breathe only on my command. Do not break, do not falter. Escape at best speed and angle.’ Sha-Kaan’s pulsed orders were greeted with thoughts of acknowledgment, determination and assurances of victory. ‘Kaan. Dive.’
Sha-Kaan’s bark was a shattering cry that echoed over the clanking, thundering noise of the Garonin invaders and their machines. In their harnesses, the dim-witted hanfeer tossed their heads and shuddered. The dragons dived. Wings tucked in tight, necks stretched out, the wind whistling over the mounds of their bodies. Their tails stabilised their lightning descent.
Sha-Kaan led them screaming towards the ruined plains. He snapped his wings out to brake and turn barely a hundred yards from the ground. He swept up to the horizontal, dipped even closer to the dust, and forged in. Garonin weapons were trained. They fired. A hundred teardrop streams of white light rattled out.
Heat blossomed on Sha-Kaan’s body. Scales were burned and ripped from his belly, from his back and flanks. To his left, a Kaan was struck square in the muzzle. The dragon roared agony. The head, engulfed in fire, was torn apart and the body dropped to the ground to impact the dust and roll over and over. Sha-Kaan ignored the pain in his body and the tears in his wings as fire drops clipped them. He urged his dragons to hold and they did. Up and to the right another was caught in a crossfire of six weapons. The vast body exploded under the pressure of the
